"You know all about it now," said he. "You know where the chamois-leather bag is, and you know where they put me. So good night, and here goes it."

So saying the old man stepped overboard, and, just as the waters closed in upon him, sang out at the top of his voice--

Down, down, down among the dead men,

There I lie.

Up to this point Bill's narrative, although not what would be called circumstantial, is nevertheless complete. What transpired afterwards is not by any means so conclusive.

When memory next asserted its sway Bill tells us he awoke out of a troubled sleep, and found his boat some distance above the gulch, moored alongside the bank, and the morning's sun well up in the heavens.

Bill's friends ventured to think the whole thing was an optical delusion--a creature of the fevered imagination. That view, however, he repudiates as being a slur on his sobriety, and, in defence thereof, puts forward the following: First, he a